Blackbird 10 - A Little Night Murder (6 page)

But what photos showed Michael with petty drug dealers? That was news to me.

Gus said, “Think your thug will be around to see your baby born? Or will the rest of his family take action, and parts of him will float up in a secluded billabong someday soon?”

Without a word, I put on my sunglasses and stalked out through the revolving door of the building and out onto the sunny sidewalk. I walked away from Gus.

He caught up and fell into step beside me. “Sorry,” he said.

“That was uncalled for.”

“I apologize. I’m a bullying sod, I admit it. And you’re probably in no condition to be toyed with.”

If he’d punched me in the nose, I couldn’t have felt more stunned. His words were very cruel. But I was determined to show no weakness. “You must be very angry with me to say a thing like that.”

“I am,” he admitted, sounding far from unhappy. He put his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and we walked together with
the throngs of people heading home for the day. “You made a spectacle of me in the newspaper during my absence. Otherwise, you did your job exceedingly well while I was away. I was also pleased to hear you stepped up while Stan took ill. Lending a hand around the office—that’s unusual for you.”

“Unusual? Of course I’d help Stan.”

“What I mean,” he said as we walked, “is that you don’t normally take editorial initiative.”

“I’m hardly qualified to take any initiatives. I’m a social reporter, not Pulitzer material.”

“How will you ever get ahead, Nora, if you have so little ambition? Do you want to report on weddings the rest of your career? Haven’t you heard?” Gus asked. “Women need to lean in, not step back when opportunities arise.”

“I can’t tell. Are you happy with my work or not?”

“You’re doing your work commendably. But you disobeyed my order.”

“Which order?”

“The one about not putting yourself in any newspaper photographs.”

I stopped short on the sidewalk and took off my glasses to stare at him. “That’s what had you sending me furious text messages from the other hemisphere? One silly photo?”

“It wasn’t silly. It was you—a reporter—on the same page with the people you were covering. You compromised the story by making yourself part of it.”

“The story? Gus, it was a party! A party for expectant mothers, raising money for the March of Dimes! Not exactly breaking crime news or political intrigue. I thought it was a nice cross-section of mothers from Philadelphia. Not just a highbrow crowd. What on earth do you imagine I was compromising?”

“I don’t want your photo in the paper,” he said, flushing.

The photograph in question had been a lark. At a garden party full of friends, I had indeed impulsively posed along with half a dozen equally pregnant young women—all of us laughing over the size of our bellies. It had made a darling picture, nothing worth getting red in the face about.

“You’re not making sense,” I said. “Your photos brought us readers. Is my picture totally repulsive? What do you have against pregnant women?”

“I have nothing against pregnant women.” He reached out and distractedly touched the shell button at my throat. Then he shook himself and took me by the elbow instead. He turned and walked me down the sidewalk again. “I have something against you being pregnant, that’s all. And I don’t want it in my newspaper.”

I laughed. “You’re squeamish! Didn’t you know where babies come from?”

“I don’t like the idea of his baby coming from you,” Gus clarified. “Under different circumstances—well, things would be different. Between us. And you know it.”

“Things aren’t different,” I said evenly, keeping up with his brisk pace. “I’m with Michael—for life. You and I agreed not to do this anymore, Gus. We work together, and that’s the extent of our relationship. If you had a change of heart while you were away—”

“I can’t deny I thought about us,” he said. “But good God, a satellite can see you’re as big as a buffalo with his child, so you’ve made your choice.”

“I have.”

“So I won’t be chasing you around the desk,” he said. “It’s undignified. I don’t like looking ridiculous.”

“You’re not ridiculous,” I said, feeling kinder. “It’s actually very flattering. At my size, I don’t feel very desirable right now, so you—it’s nice to know somebody still finds me appealing.”

“He doesn’t?” Gus demanded.

“Could we slow down, please? I can’t catch my breath.”

I was hot and sweaty, too, not to mention feeling as if things were getting slightly out of my control.

Gus immediately checked his pace, but he didn’t apologize. In a different, more dangerous tone, he said, “I can’t see you and not imagine what you did with him to get into that condition.”

“Gus,” I said.

“And I hate the way the two of you look at each other,” he said, voice still quiet, but intense. “It sickens me. I resent him. No, I despise him. I’d knock his teeth through the back of his head, if I got the chance. But I’m not pining for you, so relax. We’ll work together, and I’m going to make you work very hard indeed. Your column is one of the few successful bits of this newspaper, and you do know everybody who’s important in this damn city, so we’re going to make the most of you. Is this your party?”

We had arrived at a crowded spot on the sidewalk outside a handsomely refurbished townhouse that probably dated from the days of the Continental Congress. The freshly painted door was open, held by a smiling young man in a tuxedo shirt and bow tie, dress slacks and a baseball cap. Well-dressed partygoers wished him luck for the rest of the baseball season as they streamed past him into the house.

“Gus,” I said again, holding him back by his arm.

He shook free of my touch. “That’s all I have to say on the matter.”

He put his hand on the small of my back to help me up the staircase until we reached the lavish condominium on the second floor. The walls were white, the ceilings very high, the floor plan an open concept with one gracious room opening into the next. Tall windows looked out into the leafy trees of the park. Blazing afternoon sunlight splashed on the sparkling surfaces of mirrored furniture, the silver chandelier, the polished granite countertop big enough to
hold all the food and beverages to serve a hundred people. Rich, pale carpets lay on the mahogany floor. The upholstery was done in soft tones that had been selected by an expert in relaxed luxury.

Gus said, “Take some sexy pictures. Not pretty dresses, but tits and famous people with drinks in their fists, got it?”

With that advice, Gus let his hand fall away from my back as we entered the party.

Our host was the fortysomething father of a teenager who had famously made his family rich by designing popular cell phone apps. The son was nowhere to be seen—perhaps they kept him chained in his bedroom with his computer. The father greeted us at the door. Either he was a geek himself or he had embraced his son’s success by dressing in a slovenly T-shirt and cargo shorts with hiking sandals. His hair was long, and his black eyeglasses completed the picture of the wealthy techie. He shook Gus’s hand and was surprised when Gus asked an astute question about the new app. They went off for a confab in a corner beside some tall bookcases.

Our hostess was no lockjaw Old Philadelphian or even a New Money babe pumped full of Restylane. Instead, she was an average-looking mom slightly overdressed in a flowered Dolce and Gabbana frock, with maybe too many diamonds for daytime. Her haircut was smart, and she had brand-new blond highlights, but otherwise she appeared to be unspoiled by her newfound wealth. I had heard she was a former kindergarten teacher. A cocoon of longtime friends gathered festively around her and admired the large cocktail ring she showed them—a sure sign she was settling just fine into the lifestyle of the newly rich.

I introduced myself and told the hostess how lovely her home was. She laughingly admitted to having turned the project over to a designer, who had made the place picture-perfect. “I don’t have any talent for decorating. And I got sticker shock shopping for bathtubs.”

I liked her for that and asked how they became involved in the leukemia organization. Without a blink she told me about a brother-in-law who had died of the illness.

“We just want to do something useful now that we have the resources,” she said.

Her friends jumped in to tell me about how she had been just as sweet before she got rich.

I took notes, then snapped some photos. With my thumbs on the keyboard of my phone, I sent photos of baseball players to the
Intelligencer
’s online editor, who would post the pictures on the newspaper’s Web site within the hour.

The room was very hot, and I dabbed my forehead with a cocktail napkin. The party wasn’t a big fund-raiser, but rather a feeder event, a gathering of people who might, if properly encouraged, bring more moneyed guests to a bigger gala with an expensive ticket price. There were no high rollers out at this hour. The hedge-fund guys were still at their desks, and the top socialites didn’t stoop to midweek disease-related events anymore. Instead, I counted a handful of ornamental Junior Leaguers who were probably just breaking into the social scene or looking to meet men. Also, a scattering of good-hearted people from the medical community, plus some of the professionals who made it possible for the social set to put themselves on display: two important dermatologists, a well-known hair dresser, a pair of hungry Realtors, a spa owner and a formal-wear buyer from a big department store.

I avoided one busy, hard-faced young woman who was launching her career as a social publicist. People who wanted to be famous hired her, I’d heard, to get their names and faces in the media. By Twitter, she had already tried to push one of her clients on me—a suburban restaurant owner’s pretty wife who had no claim to fame, as far as I could see, except her good looks and ambition. Knowing
who’s who in the philanthropic world was useful for me, but I hadn’t quite decided how I felt about social climbers hiring personal publicists. If there was a good philanthropic purpose to that, I hadn’t discovered it.

From studying the crowd, I deduced that the app family hadn’t been rich long enough to attract many wealthy friends, but it wouldn’t take long for the social back-scratching to begin. Within a year, I guessed, they would be seen at top fund-raisers several nights a month. They’d be generous with their money, but they’d probably also get their nips and tucks and German cars like everyone else in their social circle. I wondered if they would publicly compete against their new friends to see who could spend the most money at luxury raffles. I hoped the mother gained more self-assurance by then, or she’d be knocking back chardonnay by lunchtime every day. Maybe the father would upgrade his wardrobe and learn to play golf. Would they be happier, though?

After a few minutes, I met an old friend in an alcove. Chandler Ann Rudiak was flipping distractedly through a book of bird prints that had been displayed on a glass-topped table.

She glanced up and saw with obvious relief that I was someone she knew in the sea of guests. “Nora! You look . . .”

“Big,” I supplied. “Please don’t ask if I’m having twins. I’m not.”

She laughed. “Okay, I won’t. Sit down. Rest a minute while we get caught up.”

Gratefully, I sank into one of two clear Lucite chairs at the table. “You look wonderful, as always. That skirt—is it Chanel?”

“Yes, last year’s collection. The blouse is from Talbot’s—on sale.”

I laughed. “You have a knack for mixing.”

“You don’t look half-bad yourself. Still pulling clothes from your granny’s closet?”

When I had first started attending parties for a living and needed elegant clothes every night of the week, I climbed the attic stairs to look through my late grandmama Blackbird’s collection of vintage couture—items as varied as Gucci miniskirts that Twiggy would have envied to beaded Dior ball gowns worn to Palm Beach galas with movie stars. I made good use of her carefully preserved clothes. Two of her friends soon gave me more fine garments, so I had a lot of valuable and classic pieces to choose from.

“Not at the moment,” I said. “I’m borrowing a lot of my sister’s maternity clothes. My taste isn’t quite the same as Libby’s, but I’m making do.”

“You always make it work.” She looked more carefully into my face. “Are you okay?”

Chandler Ann was a couple of years older than me, but I had dated her famously handsome brother Dylan for a while. I had bonded with the whole Rudiak family, and even after Dylan went on to date New York socialites far out of my league, I enjoyed the family’s traditional day-after-Thanksgiving brunch, to which they invited a hundred people every year. A while back Chandler Ann and I had practically camped out together to buy tickets for the touring show of dresses worn by the late Princess of Wales.

So I felt comfortable telling her the truth. “It’s been a complicated day.”

“What’s up? Everything hunky-dory with your baby?”

“The baby’s fine. Perfect, in fact.” I had been friends with Chandler Ann for a long time. “But something awful happened today. Jenny Tuttle passed away.”

Beneath her fringe of stylish blond bangs, Chandler Ann’s fine-boned face went through some almost comic gymnastics as she absorbed the news and tried not to show her first reaction. “That’s so sad! I know—knew—Jenny pretty well, in fact. She was a client
of ours. I saw her every week for almost a year when she was coming to the clinic.”

Past generations of the Rudiak family had been respected Philadelphia physicians. But Chandler Ann’s father had an entrepreneurial streak as well as a medical degree, and he’d opened a weight-loss clinic so popular that he franchised it nationally. All his children now worked for the lucrative company. Chandler Ann was the black sheep who hadn’t gone to medical school, so she was the chief financial officer and kept the books for the multimillion-dollar business. I reflected that diets must be doing better than ever if she could afford Chanel.

Chandler Ann said, “I’m so sorry to hear Jenny died. I— Can I ask how it happened?”

“We think she had a heart attack.”

My friend turned pale at that news. “Thank heavens she stopped seeing Dad a while back. I wonder if she— Do you think she was still dieting?”